Building Home Recording Studio On A Budget (Under $500)

Home Studio On A Budget Under $500

Building a home studio can be a challenge when starting out. You never know what gear to buy or how to stretch your budget towards the best gear. You can actually build you own studio for under $500 if you know what to buy. if you are looking to get some affordable home studio recording equipment.

If you are looking to get some affordable home studio recording equipment below are our choice picks for building a studio on a budget. This article is geared toward people looking to do record vocals or single instruments.

Budget Studio Reference Monitors

Every studio starts with the reference monitors. If you can’t hear back correctly what you have been working on it becomes very default to produce quality music.

After owning many pairs of professional studio monitors for all price ranges we can confidently say the JBL 305’s sound amazing. They are actually our favorite studio monitors and what we currently and proudly use. We have also owned the 8” versions of the same monitors but preferred the 5” pair. This deal also comes with audio cables to help keep the price down.

Budget Studio Audio Interface

Next in the chain for your budget home studio would be the converters. These are also known as the audio interface or sound card. This device converts audio signals into digital and also converts the digital signals from your computer back to audio that our ears can hear.

Various types of audio interfaces exist and for this budget post, we are recommending the scarlett solo. It allows you to record two sources (a microphone and a direct input) at the same time. It’s USB powered works great on both Mac and PC.

Budget Studio Microphone

Last in our budget signal chain for building your own home studio is the microphone. Just like most things in life, there are many options at all budget ranges. For this budget home studio setup. We recommend the Audio Technica AT2020.

We recommend the Audio Technica AT2020. It sounds clean for vocals and has a nice sense of clarity for its price range.

Budget Studio DAW Software

When it comes to recording software there are a lot of options. This type of software is often referred to as a DAW or a Digital Audio Workstation. Certain genres or styles tend to lean towards particular Daws. You can check out our Complete DAW List here.

When starting out we recommend using the wonderful free options available. First thing, if you purchased the interface we recommended above you will have access to Pro Tools Free and Ableton Live Lite.

There are also a few other free DAWs available, but we recommend Studio One Prime and Cockos Reaper. Although Reaper is not technically free it has an unlimited trial with some nag screens after 60 days.

Budget Studio Cloud Backup

We recommend spending the remaining $10 on a google drive account to backup your projects. Physical drives can help, but if they go bad they become a single point of failure for all of your work. Google drive is easy to use and works very well as a studio backup tool.

We have been using google drive in our studio for a long time and highly recommend it.

We hope you found this information helpful. Happy recording and thanks for reading.